Aida felt hot, uncomfortable, and horny as a teenager all at once. "I'm overdressed."

"A situation far more easily rectified than being underdressed I find." Ocyl shed his robe completely, standing unselfconsciously to survey the room.

An stunning redheaded servant rushed to gather the garment, collecting it in her arms the moment it stopped fluttering down. A liveried little girl who could very well have been the servant's daughter hustled over to trade the discarded clothing for a tied bundle. Ocyl seemed oblivious as the servant untied silken cords and laid out a fresh, nearly-identical garment. She took great pains to ensure it fell just the way the first one had.

It bothered her that kids were present, but at least they were fully clothed and excluded from the... activities. Aida shook her head and glanced at Ocyl. Damn did he cut a fine figure, sipping at a goblet of wine while a servant rubbed him with oil until he shone. He gestured languidly at the spectacle.

“Shall we?”

"What about birth control?" Aida said, stalling for time while she tried to get her wits about her. When another servant approached with a glass of something presumably alcoholic, she took it gratefully and downed it in one go.

He looked her up and down. "Do you carry a child?"

"No, it's been decades since I've had s... had to worry about that. Now my body's young again though so..."

A dismissive, waving gesture. "A Dynast's body is harmful to anything which tries to live within it. Or even near it, often, as you'll certainly learn. Only the heartiest babes reach full term and you'll want those few to fill out your Kin."

She mouthed "Kin?" but his attention drifted elsewhere.

He grinned and pointed out a trio launching up, laughing, in a long swirl of silk. "That is Sava, Dynast of Libriam, a verse of moldering paperwork and endless swamps. Or is it the other way around? Either way, she spends as much time not there as possible."

"So there isn't birth control? I might get pregnant again?" The idea came as both a shock and strange relief. Having another child was a scary thought even the realization made her feel alive and vibrant again in a way she couldn't verbalize even to herself.

"Your menses will come rarely and unpredictably so little worry of a man's seed congealing the blood into a child."

"That's, um, not quite how that works."

If he heard, he didn't show. "Most female Dynasts do as they will with whom they will yet conceive rarely more than once a decade."

He gestured to a tumbling pair near the apex. "That short, wide, uniquely white one is Jaxe of the Stacks. Palest Dynast you'll meet though his parents made onyx look light. A real up-and-comer. At the moment literally, as you can see. His verse's barely older than he yet already it supplies an impressive share of the Book's water."

There was water again, pronounced just off with implications it meant something else. "Water?"

He looked at her like she was an idiot. "Every livable verse has to have water. No, water."

"Thanks, so helpful," she grumbled and changed the subject. "Do Dynasts not marry?"

If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

Ocyl floated down onto a heap of cushions as though standing suddenly became too much effort. Looking away as the servant or slave oiling him worked towards Ocyl's groin did little to ease the sexual tension since his guests performed erotic deeds everywhere she looked.

"Dynasts rarely marry. Gets tiresome burying your betrothed after the first few times and marrying immortals makes 'together forever' a fearsome potentiality. Wake over there, she persists though. That man with her is her seventeenth husband. Nineteenth? I lose track."

"Wake? She rules a verse too?"

"Indeed. Graves, the boneyard at the end of the Book. 'Made of the dead by the dead for the dead' they'll recite at you any time they get a chance. Some suspect she marries just so she can bury them and luxuriate in a few years of widow's grief. Doesn't even bother to marry Kin who might live a few decades longer. I think she enjoys funerals even more than weddings."

He grinned, rubbing a hand down his gleaming torso. "Not that I'm one to judge. When you live eternally you do as you must to avoid the creeping sense of repetition and sameness soaking into your very bones as the decades and centuries pile on their tarnish."

"I know something about the weight of age too, just so you know." She glanced at the myriad groups drifting through the air or sprawled across cushions. "Does every Dynast passing through gain access to your... festivities or did you make an exception to your guest list by allowing the Dynast of One-Eighth Shithole?"

An intoxicating rush of laughter. "At least you named yours honestly. Poor Reck over there's Partaking gift holds nothing but an endless, sheer cliff face of pure chalk. He named it 'Vistas.' Seems cleverly ironic, but he's not witty enough to be clever and takes himself too seriously to be ironic. Everyone usually calls it 'Chalk' to annoy him."

"Don't know if I'd really call someone who personally owns a universe poor."

Finished with oiling Ocyl down, the masseur approached Aida with his oil basin, a thin wrap of silk barely concealing the man's body. Seeing her notice the man, Ocyl threw an arm to encompass all the attendants scattered amid the cushions. "They're all mine and all available should you take a fancy to anyone... or two or three. Well, not the Ferals, of course. They're a bit pointy in several unhelpful ways."

"I was told to leave my Feral behind." Aida debated waving the masseur off as he slipped the shoulder of her dress down to work at knots in her shoulder she hadn't known were there.

Ocyl waggled a finger at her. "First rule of being a Dynast: never leave your Ferals behind. Even if you feel perfectly safe, they grow restless. Next thing you know they're tearing down anything between them and you out of paranoia. Can be such a hassle to smooth everything out with the local Dynast, gather replacement Ferals, compensate for all the damages, and hassle with disposing of all the corpses afterwards."

"Unless you're good friends with Wake there, I suppose." Aida held her dress against her chest as the masseur slid the other shoulder down to work the muscles there.

"Yes, very good." Ocyl raised his glass to her with a grin. "You catch on quickly. Will you be joining in?"

"I... I haven't decided yet." Part of her writhed in indignant horror while the other screamed at her to let the masseur work his art further down.

"Well, if you prefer to watch or do it yourself, we've plenty of gons jars. All freshly collected and unused. Take some home if you like." He swayed to his feet. After throwing away his empty glass he bounded off to intercept a foursome landing nearby. A group of servants rushed in with armloads of cushions, gathering up all that he laid upon and replacing them with seemingly-identical duplicates.

"Gons?" She glanced about. A servant anticipated her need, the vaguely Oriental-looking woman smiling as she opened the lid to reveal living sex toys: a throbbing heap of genitals indistinguishable from the real thing except that these somehow lived independently of their hosts. With great effort, she directed her mind away from wondering about their origins.

"I'm... I'm good, thank you." The contents of the jar disturbed and aroused in unsettlingly equal measure.

The masseur moved to her calf, gradually working his way towards her knee while the female servant set the gons jar down and set to massaging her hand.

Trembling, Aida finished her glass and motioned for another. The masseur lifted the hem of her dress higher to work her thigh.

Aida sighed. The tension fell away all over as she made up her mind. "Would be impolite to turn him down in his own house."

Jaxe, the squat but brawny albino Dynast, spotted her. Winked. She waved and he launched towards her trailing a comet's tail of green silk.

"When in Rome." She stood, drained her drink, slipped from her dress, and threw herself to meet him.